There are many different types of video display technology being commercialized for a number of different applications. Liquid crystal displays (LCD), digital light processing (DLP), cathode ray tube, and plasma are but a few of the technologies trying to gain prominence in this competitive market. Video displays are now used in almost any application requiring information or data to be shown. One area that has seen enormous growth are applications requiring high resolution video displays. Computer displays, office projectors, and high definition television are some of the areas fueling the development.
Display technology has been advancing at a very rapid pace. A display driver circuit is a critical component of a video display. In general, a display driver circuit receives video information, processes the video information, and provides it in the proper format for the display it is driving. The number of video formats has grown as new display technologies and higher resolution displays are introduced. Display driver circuits are designed to be highly flexible to handle a wide range of formats. For example, VGA (Video Graphics Array), SVGA (Super Video Graphics Array), XGA (Extended Graphics Array), and SXGA (Super Extended Graphics Array) are a few of the widely known video standards that a typical display driver circuit could handle. HDTV, WUXGA, QXGA, and QUXGA are examples of formats for high resolution video displays.
Display driver circuits are designed to be highly flexible to handle a wide range of formats. The higher resolution video display formats are pushing the limits of what can be manufactured using conventional integrated circuit wafer processing. To show the enormity of the problem, a next generation display driver circuit for a pixel based QXUGA high resolution video display will have to provide video information to 7,680,000 pixels, sixty times a second. The size and the complexity may also make the cost of such a chip prohibitive.
Accordingly, it is desirable to have the capability to handle large pixel count displays using display driver integrated circuits that can be manufactured at low cost. In addition, it is desirable to drive these high resolution displays with no visual artifacts. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.